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Emma Heron Edge Hill University, U.K. Exiled Across the Mersey Performing Religio-Cultural Identity at the Borders with the Liverpool Welsh Abstract This paper juxtaposes the hybridised, religio-cultural distinctiveness of traditional articulations of Liverpool Welsh identity with discoveries made during the creation of the semi-autobiographical performance Cartref/At Home and the exhibition Cegin y Capel/The Chapel Kitchen. The Liverpool Welsh are a community of Welsh “ex-pats” living in Liverpool, though historically the relationship between the Northern Welsh and Liverpool has been ambivalent. In common with many “colonised” peoples, Welsh people have “never simply and completely opposed” English society (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin 1998, 12-13), nor have they ever completely rejected the influence of Liverpool on their culture and industry, even after the flooding of Capel Celyn (1965) became such a resounding symbol of their colonised status. Today, the community is largely invisible to other Liverpudlians. Self-described exiles, the Liverpool Welsh view themselves as a Welsh language community located in England. Key aspects of the community’s identity are chronicled by its male leadership, expressed through the prism of Welsh Nonconformism. This paper re-examines the significance of more traditional articulations of the Liverpool Welsh community’s distinctiveness, calling for a more inclusive, multi-vocal approach to chronicling its histories, one that better represents the range of experiences contained within the community in the twenty-first century. Performance, Religion and Spirituality vol. 3 no 1, pp. 5-23 http://prs-journal.org ISSN: 2637-4366 6 | Performance, Religion and Spirituality vol. 3 no. 1 Self-described as “a community of exiles living on Merseyside” (Rees n.d.) the Cymry Lerpwl (Liverpool Welsh) are an ex-pat community of Welsh speakers based in the city of Liverpool in the north west of England. Many Welsh have been drawn to Liverpool for work and education, settling in key areas around the city like the Welsh streets in Liverpool 8, in Anfield and in “Little Wales,” an area just outside the city centre (Museum of Liverpool n.d.). Historically, they were tremendously influential. Their impact on the local dialect is as profound as that of the Irish (Collinson 2015) and they were well-regarded for their skills in construction, with much of the architectural landscape of the city of Liverpool built by Welsh hands (Gower 2020; Rees 2001; 2008; 2014). In the nineteenth century, their affection for Liverpool was apparent in their informal designation of the city as the “capital of north Wales” announced in a public meeting attended by newly elected Liberal MP and future Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, in 1890. It is an aphorism still heard today (Shipton 2008).The prevalence of the Welsh language across North Wales, coupled with Liverpool’s status within the British Empire, meant that in the nineteenth century there would be little discernible difference between a new arrival from Wales and one from any other part of the realm. As Eric Richards points out in his book Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600, to many Welsh migrants, the mix of populations in the port would be just as foreign as travelling to Wales’s colony, y Wladfa, in Patagonia (2004, 302). Consequently, like their countryfolk in Trelew or Gaiman, they “developed a tendency to accentuate their Welshness” (2004, 302), and so, though many Welsh immigrants may have been able to speak some English, the Cymry Lerpwl community principally evolved as a Welsh language enclave. Traditionally Liverpool’s high status with the population of north Wales is grounded first and foremost in the convenience of its location. The distance between Caernarfon and Liverpool is around 75 miles, whereas the distance between Caernarfon and Cardiff (Wales’s actual capital city), is nearer 150 miles. An additional factor is Wales’s unique geography whereby routes heading east, out of the country and into England, have tended to be more accessible than internal routes running north to south. Today, those seeking to travel from north Wales by train to their capital city, Cardiff, in the south of the country, find themselves having to trek a significant distance east, into England, in order to travel south, before travelling west again into south Wales. As well as offering routes by train, car and bus, Liverpool also offers the possibility of travelling by sea to and from a range of locations along the north Wales coast. Historically, it is this geographical accessibility, coupled with Liverpool’s status as a port and as second city of the British Empire, that made it an attractive destination for economic migrants, both internal and external. It also served as a potential gateway to other parts of the world. In 1865, this made Liverpool the perfect departure point for the Mimosa, the vessel chosen to carry Welsh settlers to Patagonia to establish Wales’s only colony, y Wladfa (National Museums Liverpool n.d.) thereby linking the city to a key event in the history of the Welsh nation. Today, the Welsh living in north Wales, looking for the nearest “big” city, still tend to look to Liverpool for opportunities as wide ranging as studying at university, finding employment, going on nights out and for Christmas shopping. Industrialisation has led English economic migrants to reverse the journey for work, whilst others have moved for leisure or to retire to the slower pace of a rural existence. This has led to tensions between Welsh and English speaking Heron: Exiled Across the Mersey | 7 communities that saw English speakers “described publicly as 'like a form of foot and mouth disease' by a former adviser to the Welsh Assembly” (Richards 2004, 10). Against this backdrop of fluid migration between Liverpool and north Wales, rather than identifying as a community with a hybridised Welsh/English identity, the Liverpool Welsh define themselves as a migrant Welsh language community located outside Wales “proud to be preserving [their] heritage and language” (Rees n.d.). They are led by the minister of the Welsh Presbyterian Capel Bethel, Dr D. Ben Rees, a leading authority on the history of the Liverpool Welsh community and universally acknowledged as a key driver in maintaining the group’s profile, particularly within the Welsh language community (Gower 2020). Due to diminishing congregations and maintenance costs, Capel Bethel was demolished in 2011 with the Sunday School room at the back of the original building being converted into a dual-purpose space encompassing both the new chapel and a newly created Liverpool Welsh Centre (Liverpool Echo 2011). With the creation of this Centre, there has been some broadening of activity, including the introduction of a weekly Welsh-language Learners Study Group (Liverpool Welsh n.d.). Still, the community’s profile within Liverpool remains much lower than that of the Irish. A possible reason for this might be a decline in the community’s population. Once representing 10% of the inhabitants of Liverpool, the Cymry Lerpwl expat community has declined considerably over the last century to the point where only 4,771 people identified Wales as their country of birth in the 2011 census, a figure which, at that time, translated to roughly 1% of the population of Liverpool (Office for National Statistics 2013). This drop in numbers could be indicative of many things, not least of which would be Liverpool’s own variable fortunes over the last fifty years. In the 1970s and 1980s the city experienced a significant period of economic decline. During this time Liverpool was much less attractive to economic migrants. The resultant decline in population could therefore be a factor in its diminishing visibility in the city’s contemporary cultural life. If so, it would be reasonable to assume that the same effect would be observable for other migrant communities including Liverpool’s other prominent Celtic community, the Irish. The same census (2011) reveals that 4,978 of Liverpool’s inhabitants indicated they were born in Northern Ireland whilst 3,294 identified Ireland as their place of birth (Office for National Statistics 2013). Whilst almost twice the figure of the Welsh, this still only represented 1.8% of Liverpool’s population at that time. Yet there is little sign of a diminishment of the cultural influence of the Irish. Rather the city’s special status as Ireland’s unofficial capital, which also dates back to the nineteenth century, is celebrated each year in the form of the Liverpool Irish Festival, an event that seeks to “[bring] Liverpool and Ireland closer together using the arts and culture” (Liverpool Irish Festival n.d.). Primarily an English language community, Liverpool Irish events are more accessible to a wider group of individuals in the city interested in the Irish influence on Liverpool’s arts and cultural heritage. Currently there is no equivalent festival celebrating the Liverpool Welsh community or the historic relationship between Liverpool and North Wales. In 2000, the BBC reported that Liverpool City Council had invited the National Eisteddfod (an annual Welsh cultural festival that includes competitions in music and poetry and which is, by some measures, the largest in Europe) to Liverpool in 2007 (BBC 2000). In 2004, this translated into a formal bid for the city of Liverpool to host the National Eisteddfod as part of the city’s 800th anniversary celebrations in 2007. In response, the then 8 | Performance, Religion and Spirituality vol. 3 no. 1 Archdruid of Wales, Dr. Robyn Lewis, described the proposal as “stupid,” going on to tell Good Morning Wales that Liverpool was “not a city where the eisteddfod would want to leave its Welsh-speaking stamp” (BBC 2004). A key theme in his invective related to the timing of the bid which coincided with Liverpool’s application to be European Capital of Culture in 2008 and to the council’s insensitivity to the anger of the Welsh at the events surrounding the creation of Llyn Celyn reservoir in the mid- twentieth century.